Marjoe Gortner - Former Child False Teacher (1972) Documentary

MARJOE - MARJOE GORTNER - 1972 DOCUMENTARY (FORMER CHILD FALSE PROSPERITY GOSPEL PREACHER): The Story of Marjoe is that he was Trained as a child to be an "Evangelist", without even being a true Born-Again Christian (John 3:3). He used church-goers to gain: Money, Fame and Fortune, and only stopped when he was finally bothered by his conscience. He filmed this award winning documentary at the end of his scam, in order to demonstrate to his many followers his true nature.. and even today, some of them do not believe he was a False Prophet. This is an eye-opening documentary, and must-see TV exposing the False Prosperity Gospel.

Marjoe's parents named him "Marjoe" on behalf of the names "MARY (MAR) & JOSEPH (JO)"..put together.

Marjoe Gortner - Former Child False Teacher

Marjoe exposes the Tricks & Lies of the Prosperity Gospel

An Award Winning 1972 Documentary produced about Marjoe Gortner, written by Screenwriter Sarah Kernochan (below), who as a child, was a False Prosperity Revival Preacher & so-called Faith-Healer of whom later-in-his life exposes the Lies & Tricks of his trade.

QUOTE BY MARJOE GORTNER: "If you're going to get into big time religion, these are the games you have to play. You go into it as a business and you work it as a business."

Other Possible Names that people are Searching for to find this Documentary Video are: Marjio, Mario, Margo, Margio

Quotes by Marjoe Gortner

QUOTE by MARJOE GORTNER - A FORMER: CHILD "FALSE PROSPERITY GOSPEL PREACHER": "It was my duty to give them the best show possible. Say you've got a timid little preacher in North Carolina or somewhere. He'll bring in visiting evangelists to keep his church going. We'd come in and hit the crowd up and we were superstars. It's the charisma of the evangelist that the audience believes in and comes to see."

QUOTE by MARJOE GORTNER - A FORMER: CHILD "FALSE PROSPERITY GOSPEL PREACHER": "If you're going to get into big time religion, these are the games you have to play. You go into it as a business and you work it as a business."

QUOTE by MARJOE GORTNER - A FORMER: CHILD "FALSE PROSPERITY GOSPEL PREACHER": "As a preacher, I'm working with the crowd, watching the crowd, trying to bring them to that high point at a certain time in the evening. I let everything build up to that moment when they're all in ecstasy. The crowd builds up and you have to watch it that you don't stop it. You start off saying you've heard that tonight's going to be a great night; then you begin the whole pitch and keep it rolling."

QUOTE by MARJOE GORTNER - A FORMER: CHILD "FALSE PROSPERITY GOSPEL PREACHER": "It's the same at a rock-and-roll concert. You have an opening number with a strong entrance; then you go through a lot of the old standards, building up to your hit song at the end."

Sarah Kernochan is an Academy Award-winning Documentarian & a Screenwriter.

Sarah Kernochan (who wrote the documentary "Marjoe") writes: "In 1971, my partner Howard Smith and I went on an indelible odyssey into Pentacostal America, at a time when the born-again faith was still marginal, seemingly a holdover from the Depression-era "old-time religion" revivals. New Yorkers clothed as Christian brethren, we were traveling in disguise in order to shoot our controversial documentary "Marjoe" (now in re-release on DVD).

Our guide and film subject was young Marjoe Gortner, a handsome, charismatic preacher whose career began at the age of four, when he was "called to God" (or so his parents had everyone believing). Marjoe talked behind the scenes about the tricks of his trade, the faking of miracles and glossalalia; raising money for the phony "ministries"; how to work up the crowd; his non-belief in God. He sold cheap red bandanas as "prayer cloths," hawked LP's of his childhood sermons, and split the "tithing" take with his host minister in front of our camera.

We filmed at four completely different churches in the West, South, and Midwest. We expected that one or two of the ministers besides Marjoe might turn out to be crooked, but to our surprise all four were conspicuous flimflammers. One actually delivered the immortal sermon "God Wants Me to Have a Cadillac." A fourth minister, the only one we thought might be sincere, was later arrested for running stolen cars across the Mexican border.

Marjoe shook his head in amazement at how eager congregations were to believe in him rather than coming to God on their own, eliminating the middleman so to speak. Marjoe knew the film would "out" him but he thought it was worth it. He said, "I'm hoping they'll see it's not necessary to have some person to get you off, to put your faith in." Because so often that person is in it for something else besides benign invocations of the Holy Spirit.

No evangelicals saw the film, of course, because their ministers banned it. And now, some 35 years later, they have grown stupendously: 4 out of 10 Americans define themselves as "born again." And they're still not getting the message. How many Jimmy Swaggarts, Jim Bakkers, and Ted Haggards have to crash and burn for them to see the pattern? Pentacostalism offers - besides salvation - fantastic entertainment, and thus it attracts entertainers. Among these, inevitably, are the showmen, hypocrites and con artists who build huge financial empires by exploiting people's earnest faith...

I hope that, in the massive soul-searching to come in this country, those people whose souls are [professed to be] saved will do the most searching."